The questions academics ask are reminiscent to
me of trying to remember my vowels when I was in grade school. The
questions are: who, what, when, where, how, and sometimes why.

For dialogue there are typically two groups of
theorists, there are the ‘what and how’ of dialogue and the ‘why
group’. The ‘what and how group’ are filled with scholars like
Leonard Swidler, Harvey Cox, and Rabbi Soloveitchik. What is the goal?
What are we going to talk about? What will dialogue look like? How do we
achieve this? Those are the questions this group answers and seeks to
answer in their research.

Then there are the why people. Why dialogue?
Why? Why interfaith? They tend to get caught up in the eschatology of it
all. A lot of the foundational work for this group was done by John Hick
or maybe William Cantwell Smith. The unity of
heaven/God/afterlife/ultimate reality/ or whatnot is what they are
trying to discover. They want to bring different faiths together so we
can learn about the completeness of what religions are, what religions
are about, why people are faithful, and what they are faithful too in a
deeper way than ever before. This was always done by studying religions
separately or comparatively – now we can study religions together.
They will discuss what makes up faith as a component of interfaith and
what is meant by dialogue. Dialogue is Greek, it comes from the words
Dia meaning two (or many as it is often used) and logos, meaning
speaking, reason or divine wisdom. So we get a sense of the transcendent
as being an aspect of dialogue; the search for trying to find the
highest form of truth - what better setting for this to take place than
at an interfaith meeting.

The other area the ‘why group’ focuses on
is: why do dialogue for the community? Or the world? Here you would read
Hans Kung who famously said "there will be no peace among the
nations without peace among the religions, that there will be no peace
among the religions without a dialogue among the religions," or you
can read Paul Knitter who applies liberation theology to interfaith
dialogue theory saying that dialogue participants need to talk about the
needy, the poor, the oppressed, the underdog, and stand up for them for
dialogue to be meaningful.

Very rarely do you get someone who talks about
the what, how and why, Mohammed Abu-Nimer does, and his focus is on
peace talks in the Middle East. Diana Eck does sometimes, but not that
much. I would like to look at these three questions together because
they are intermingled beyond separation and they are interconnected
whenever dialogue takes place.

Interfaith dialogue in North America is very
much defined by the World’s Parliament of Religions which took place
in 1893 as a part of the World Columbian Exposition. The Exposition was
a celebration of modernity and human achievement which took place in
Chicago. The best engineers, scientists, doctors, and philosophers came
together to share their ideas and revel in their accomplishments. The
Parliament of Religions was near the end of the Exposition and was a
means of bringing different religious minds together to display the
equality and progressiveness of the Parliament. William Hutchinson
describes the Parliament as such:

The Parliament, in some ways was a rather
modest venture, achieved epochal status because it was almost completely
unprecedented. Intellectual and various other leaders of the various
non-Western religions had never before been invited to such a gathering.
Not only that; American Protestants had never included Jews and
Catholics in a conference on religion, and almost never in meetings
concerning other subjects of supposedly common concern. A mere seventy
or eighty years earlier the idea that Hindus or Muslims might have
intellectuals to send, or even that these religions might be real ones
with something to offer, would have been considered laughable.

The World’s Parliament of religions
brought together various ideas that were present at that time and
challenged others. As a part of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the
Parliament was a celebration of America and its perceived place in the
world.

One of the main underlying ideas that was
brought forth and subsequently challenged was what Richard Hughes Seager
calls the ‘Columbian Myth.’ In this myth, America portrays itself as
the secular inheritor of the enlightenment and the religious inheritor
of the kingdom of God. America was celebrating that it could "build
the kingdom of God on earth through the institutions of the
republic." The exposition itself was meant to display the
culmination of science, philosophy, and the also religious apex of
civilization through the 1893 festivities. With the exposition taking
place in America, it was displaying itself as the centre for human
achievement. With the religions of the world meeting in an American
metropolis there was an ever present sense of triumphalism and Christian
universalism which was underlying the parliament despite the lip service
made to the equality of all religious traditions.

What was not expected however, was that the
myth would be challenged and eventually criticized thoroughly by both
westerners and non-westerners alike. Keschel relates an anecdote in that
"During the Parliament, one delegate from Japan pointed explicitly
to the anti-Japanese sentiment that greeted him in America, with signs
that read ‘No Japanese is allowed to enter here.’ ‘If such be the
Christian ethics,’ he said, ‘well we are perfectly satisfied to
remain heathen.’" Another delegate questioned the Christian
triumphalism outright when Eck tells us that, "In seeking ‘universal
values’, most parliament liberals really meant that Christianity was
the emerging universal religion ... Dharmapala showed how the universal
teachings of the Buddha had come to many centuries before Christ."

While the parliament advocated the inclusion
of many religions, some saw this as merely a means of promoting a
friendly style missionary project. More broadly, diversity was respected
with the assumption that eventually the world would become more like
America, that religions would become more like Christianity. So while
Swami Vivekananda promoted religious unity across the globe his message
was tampered by redefining what kind of universal religious unity this
would be, i.e. it would not by an assimilating, Christianized world
religion, rather a unity of diverse religions. He spoke about how no one
religion should prosper at the expense of another. He stated that God
would forbid the ridding of religious traditions, therefore Buddhism and
Hinduism should continue on, despite what lay in the hearts of certain
Christian missionaries.

Following the Exposition there was a hundred
year gap before the next parliament took place. In 1993 the World’s
Parliament of Religions met again to sign a declaration of peace and
harmony as by each religious representative. By the time this parliament
came about there were new myths to be promoted and others to be
questioned by interfaith dialogue.

By 1993 scholars had thoroughly dismissed the
notions of Christian supremisicism, triumphalism, and universalism as a
thing of the past even if not all practitioners followed suit.
Pragmatically speaking this was because one hundred years later other
religions were still going strong and making their presence known in the
religious studies departments in North America and throughout the
continent more broadly. The immigration policies of the 60s and the 70s
allowed for people of different colours and ethnicities to move much
more freely into the US and Canada than ever before. This was reflected
in the 1993 parliament which sought to bring about a new meaning for
getting religious people together. In the first parliament there were
Christians bringing in a few delegates from other religions, in 1993
this was a much more multi-religious event. More religions were
represented and there was a higher ratio of non-Christians to
Christians. This also affected the conversations and the goals of the
1993 parliament. Here the focus was not simply on ideas of equality and
the religious unity that all religious people can be a part of; but
there was an outward focus, not on religions themselves but on the world
and religion’s role in the world. Because the notions of secularity
had grown to the point where some people were wondering what good
religion is, whether religions cause more violence and division than
harmony and unity and the parliament responded in turn with the
declaration Towards a Global Ethic where the focus was on
bringing religious adherents to sign a document condemning violence,
economic disparity, and promoting tolerance and equal status between men
and women.

Since 1993 there has been a parliament every 5
(or so) years. There was one last December (2009) where the focus was on
the condemnation of religious violence and issues of globalization such
as sustainability of the environment and aboriginal reconciliation
efforts around the world.

But interfaith dialogue has changed its
meaning from simply mega-events like the parliaments. The parliaments
draw anywhere from 6000-9000 people and Keschel notes that the
excitement about parliaments isn’t so much in the presentations
themselves (although that’s not to say they can’t be great) but in
the conversations that take place randomly throughout the week. The
elevator or coffee shop discussions where people from different faiths
meet and discuss their lives, their thoughts and in some ways an aspect
of who they are. This is referred to by some as the ‘dialogue of life’
in that it can take place anywhere – not just a conference but a
workplace, bus stop, shopping mall or whatever, wherever two people of
different faiths meet and have a conversation. These micro-conversations
make up an aspect of interfaith dialogue collectively; they capture a
sense of genuine conversation. Such conversations compliment the notions
of a grand eschatological dialogue (with the intentional allusion to
logos) in their simplicity and elegancy.

IGR fits uniquely in between other models of
dialogue in several fashions. The conversations are organic, between
people who have developed (or are developing) relationships between one
another. The dialogue that takes place here has a formal topic
"marriage" or "medical ethics" and yet it has an
informal set up, people speak when compelled, there is no specific order
or speaker, simply a moderator that tries to encourage every person who
wants to speak to do so and ward off the chaos of an unmoderated group
discussion.

IGR has sought to deal with the myths that
have plagued interfaith dialogue in the past. There are guidelines to
keep one religion from dominating the group and because the meetings are
monthly and ongoing people can come or go as they please, issues that
arise in the community can be addressed and genuine cohesion can be
achieved.

Another means in which IGR is between models
is that usually groups are defined as either social justice interfaith
movements or simply dialogue groups. IGR nicely divides the meetings
between half on discussion of religious themes and half on community
involvement.

IGR also fits into this grander scheme of
interfaith dialogue in North America because it too has myths that it
tries to propagate and those that it tries to diminish. As we have seen
over the past few months Waterloo is plagued with myths that Canada is
solely a Christian Nation, that Muslims (or any "other") are
to be feared, or that religious differences must become points of
contention. IGR propagates myths like (and I got this from the IGR
website) religious diversity can lead to enrichment, to deeper
knowledge, to shared religious experience, to learning, understanding,
and respect.

Elliade, a famous scholar of religion pointed
out that we have to be careful when we say something is ‘just a myth’.
There is power, truth, reality, and substance behind our myths. Myths
can relate to us either sacredness or profanity. Myths define how we
form our worldviews. That is why myths are tied to our identity, our
purpose and ultimately our dialogues with others. It is through our
interactions with one who we regard as different that we are lead to a
deeper understanding of our myths and those formulated about others. In
our search to question old myths and promote new ones we can be lead by
Raimundo Panikkar who stated "To answer the question 'Who am I?' I
must ask the question 'Who are you?'"